I remember enjoyably reading this some years ago, without now recalling its details. ( )

Rumi is everything that we have been accustomed to think that a Muslim cannot be. When we think of a Muslim, we often think of a legalist—an intolerant, possibly violent legalist. But Rumi frustrates legalists of every tradition and description.

When I first read this book several years ago, I wanted something more wholesome than what I had been doing—and Rumi is wholesome—so I started looking for Shams. But in looking for the wholesome, I had the inherited idea, the cultural assumption, of politeness. Rumi is not polite. Rumi is so much bigger than that. Politeness is a sort of guarded appearance. Rumi is the essence beyond appearance, like a sort of rude silence.

And yet, he is also wholesome.

…. Rumi said a lot of cool things, but I think maybe my favorite was:

I gave sexual love with my eyes….
Until one day, I didn’t

For the sparseness of a thing, the multiple ways of getting from A to B, and yet there is a common trysting-place: impermanence….

…. James, brother of Jesus, ends his letter by saying that “love covers a multitude of sins”; usually we take that in relation to ourselves: because I love you, you’ll make me happy and overlook my many sins. But of course, it also works the other way: I love you, so my love covers your sins….

(“My love covers your violence, your greed.”)

I don’t have that down yet, but I’m glad I came across it, because although I didn’t draw another Rumi quote from the last part of the book I read today, (I was planning on the Rumi quote being the end), I guess I needed it this morning, since there are so many liars in the world, of various kinds, and especially the un-subtle ones make me angry; but if I were to get angry at them, the little goblins would laugh at me, cooking by the fire.

I have loved Rumi, and the Coleman Bark's translation, since I was a young girl and my father used to quote from it.

The poetic prose and lyrical flow of the passages compliment the deep wisdom of his words.

This is not a book to be speed read, rather, to be savoured, passage by passage. Each quatrain contains a depth of spiritually to be meditated upon.

Buy this book, incorporate it into your life, read it to your children and grandchildren. You will enrich their lives. ( )

Took a bit longer to read than usual and at times I wondered about Rumi's ramblings and their impetus. I felt I was reading his personal journal because, hey, that's what this is. I wonder what he would feel knowing his deepest thoughts are now widely read. Learned what most emotionally intelligent humans learn and strive for has not changed over time. Our souls have remained steadfastly the same despite the era in which we live. The human condition then = the human condition now. So what IS the meaning of life if we make no collective progress in growing our souls as humans? ( )

I was introduced to the Sufi mystic Rumi in a college Religion course on mysticism, and fell in love with the depth found in the simplicity of his words. I now use this book as a "Magic 8-Ball" of sorts...if I have a problem, I flip through it and stop at random, and read through Rumi's answer for me. His poetry is beautiful and his wisdom leaps off the page into your heart: "you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop," "maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots," are only a few of my favorites. Rumi is truly timeless. ( )